All participants will tell you: the Nairobi International School on "Africa and global change" was a great success. The high quality of the students, of the lecturers, of the venue, have made these two weeks a memorable event for everyone, with rich and lively discussions and contacts. The challenge of language (the teaching was in French or English) has even stimulated the encounters between those young researchers coming from literally all corners of Africa: 30 countries were represented, from Maghreb to South Africa, and from Cape Verde to Comoro Islands!
The idea of "student projects" was raised during a particularly noteworthy evening session. After a rather brisk discussion where participants were far from unanimity, the 34 students (actually all young professionals in their country) took the matter in hand, organised themselves into working groups and started to draft projects. The basic idea was to build up "mini-projects", on topics of regional significance for several participants, and relevant to global change. Beyond its educational interest, the exercise was aimed at defining projects that could permit, once refined, a continuing collaboration after School ends up. The ambition of some participants was to lead those projects to a point where they look like a true scientific proposal susceptible of getting support or funding.
Seven working groups thus emerged, covering a variety of disciplines (see next page). Let us wish that the many relationships established in the course of the Nairobi School between students, lecturers and science programme managers coming from all around the world, perpetuate into an increased regional scientific collaboration in global change studies. This is what the MEDIAS network initiative is all about !